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Time Saving Linux Desktop Tips?
dan_polt asks: "I currently use a Linux desktop system, at work. One of the great things about the Linux desktop is that there are lots of ways to save a lot of time from useful widgets and configuration to minimize the pain of repetitive tasks. Most of my work involves web/e-Mail/SSH access, and I have a very high spec'd machine with dual-head 1600x1200 screens. What software or configuration tips might Slashdot have for me to: make better use of my time; make the most of my screen real estate; and make my use of the desktop more effective?"
1. Give me your machine.
2. You have more free time.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Don't be posting to Slashdot and reading the trolls you will receive in response instead of working on that high-spec'd dual headed monster you got.
;)
That'll save you a ton more time than any of the advice given here
Personally, I have tried to use as much as I can via Putty (SSH+screen) and keep everything I do in one window. It cuts down on how much I have taking up my real estate and it seems to make me more productive.
Even with a 23" LCD it's nice to have everything in one place.
Try watching Star Wars and working at the same time! Wait a sec, maybe that wouldn't work...
make better use of my time
Quit f-ing around on Slashdot and get back to work!
First thing you do to increase productivity is turn off all the blinkenlight widgetry. Even if the frenetic distractions every second don't give you seizures, they'll certainly slow your mental processes down.
;)
Then, open a web browser in one window and a terminal in the other and get to work you slacker!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I use Linux mostly at work as well, I do work in a Windows-centric environment so I use VMWare to run Windows. Otherwise I would rather just use the virtual consoles, with ssh, elinks (for browsing), and rarely X. I do find X to be useful for things that I must use it for, but for the most productivity, nothing beats a console.
Get Slashdot to space the posts 10 hours apart. That'll increase geek-productivity worldwide in no time.
I realize this is offtopic, but I do believe it needs to be said.
There were 10 hours and 26 minutes between front page posts. And people wonder why we're bleeding users to other sites? It's the BS editors. The BS dupes. The BS factual errors. Seriously, wtf are we paying Slashdot for? If you're buying a subscription, what are you getting? What are the advertisements on the page doing for us? Where does this money go?
I've always left ads on Slashdot because I 'support' the culture, but this is the final straw. Until this shit is fixed, I'm non-existant. This is my last post.
Fuck slashdot. (This is not a troll. This is a serious rant of someone who wanted to spend Sunday afternoon catching up on tech news.)
hrrm.
Unless those 1600x1200 screens are giant (most aren't, I think my 17" monitor here can go that far), your text becomes tiny. Put one of them into console mode instead of graphics and keep your SSH session on there, then use X11 forwarding if you need apps on the other screen.
gentoo with xorg, openbox, and torsmo.
btw: tangent pager ftw!
#!/bin/sh /usr/local/bin/games
rm -f
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Just run Windows and remain as clueless with 90% of the others.
Insert Windows CD. Reboot.
One of the great things about the Linux desktop is that there are lots of ways to
save a lot of time from useful widgets
spend a lot of time installing useless widgets
and configuration to minimize the pain of repetitive tasks.
and obsecure configurations to maximize the pain of maintaining a complex computer system.
GNU Screen is a featured packed window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes. You can detach from remote screen sessions and the program will continue to run. You can then re-attach later; an essential feature if you use ssh alot.
Just enter in Konqueror
fish://user@yourdomain.com
(yes that is fish) and you will be asked for your ssh password.
Your remote files appear in Konqueror & you can then copy/paste etc to your local filesystem.
Translate into English
QS is a great app for OS X. One of it's many functions is as a launcher.
Say I want to start inkscape. I press apple-space,i,n,k. by that point, qs has figured out that i want inkscape and has displayed it's icon, then i press enter and inkscape launches.
or say i want Jack Johnson's phone number. I press apple-space,j,c,k,j,n,s,n. his contact icon pops up, i press the left arrow and his phone number is highlighted, then i press enter and the number fills the screen on a transparent window.
it saves me a whack of time, and i'd love to see a free program with this functionality
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
could it be?
3x3 virtual desktops with a web browser in the middle one. Of course, I think what you end up doing should depend on what you are trying to do with your computer. For me, I do a lot of system administration so I tend to use a lot of terminals. I got used to using a 160x60 sized terminal for my suso.org screen session (which runs things like mutt, etc.). I think gkrellm makes good use of space and I like it for controlling the volume. Figure out what programs you use the most and put them in the panel (gnome, kde, xfce or whatever). Don't put everything in the panel or on the desktop, it will just make common icons harder to find. And use tabs for web browsing of course. Its all good.
I think making good use of virtual desktops is a must. And you can't use too many. I think a lot of people get turned off by programs like the Gimp because they don't use virtual desktops properly and think too much about the way things work in Windows and Mac OS X. Its different here.
What window manager/desktop environment are you using? In general, I would say make use of what you already have. Assuming you use FireFox, make liberal use of the tabs function; I prefer about five per window on my 1280x1024 single screen system, so you could probably do more without the tabs becoming too small. Also, when SSHing or doing general terminal work, use a terminal with tabs. The Gnome terminal will do this, but multi-aterm is less of a resource hog. (For some reason I can't seem to copy and paste into multi-aterm, something I can do in the Gnome term. If there's a way around this I would be interested; the copy and pasting is helpful.) I know this is not much, but I usually find that making more efficient use of your environment is more something to sit and think about a bit. It's better to try to work with what you have than to go and install a bunch of applications that may or may not help.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
I just come here for the comments. What other sites have the volume (if not quality, har har) of public comments posted to Slashdot?
Hardcore nudity on the left monitor, Slashdot front page auto-refreshing on the right. What more could a geek at work ask for?
Oh wait.. for work you say? Well, how liberal is your boss?
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Just install superkaramba, works like konfabulator with widgets and stuff. http://www.superkaramba.com/
For one thing, according to the "work" you do, most of the things there require interactive user input.
For another, all of the things you've stated as example, doesn't really require much desktop real estate. ie. For web browsing, almost all modern browsers have tabbed browsing nowadays; e-Mail, most modern email apps (GUI or command line) supports multiple mailboxes anyway; SSH, many have mentioned screen before my post.
Like I said, your examples don't really require much screen estate. Other than web browsing, the other activities you're performing can to an extent be automated. ie. Email: use filters and/or auto-responders and/or forwarders; SSH: shell scripts are your friends.
If you provide specific examples of your day-to-day work, then maybe us Slashdotters can help you more.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
http://hocwp.free.fr/xbindkeys/xbindkeys.html
Some good ones from my .xbindkeysrc:
"xmms --stop" Mod4 + Up
"xmms --play-pause" Mod4 + Down
"xmms --fwd" Mod4 + Right
"xmms --rew" Mod4 + Left
"emacs" Mod4 + e
"firefox" Mod4 + m
"oocalc ~/aspreadsheet.sxc" Mod4 + c
Use something like fluxbox or any of the other *box windowmanagers. No bloat, No blinkenlighten, No distractions. Make keyboard shortcuts for everything you use frequently. Terminal, Browser, Maximize, Close, etc. Learn to appreciate workspaces, if you're adept at switching between them you won't need multiple screens.
Setting up an efficient workspace depends a lot on what exactly you do most of the time and how you prefer to work.
Keeping in mind that these tips might not be at all applicable to you, here are a few things I've found that help me to be more efficient.
When doing software development, I like to keep code open in one window and documentation open in another. This is much more useful if your working with an unfamiliar language or API.
When I'm doing web design or coding in PHP I like to keep code open in one window and a web browser open in the other for testing.
Avoid keeping email or IM clients open at all times one one monitor. Even if you are in regular communication with co-workers having these things open all the time is a great distraction.
Choose a good Desktop Environment. While I like KDE for regular non-work stuff, I find that I'm often a lot more productive using WindowMaker, not really sure why this is though to be honest.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Get accustomed to the "Workspace Switcher" and then make some hotkeys to switch between workspaces (I use CTRL+ALT+). If you have a beefy machine it's as if you have 2,4,6,+ monitors rather than just one.
1) Don't be afraid to use newer versions of software, but don't try upgrading when you have deadlines pending. Switching from things like XTerm to more modern terminals (Gnome terminal, KDE's term app, whatever) will benefit you in the long run, but there's always quirks that will pop up, especially if the change requires installation or upgrading libraries. Be willing to try new software, but don't be too anxious.
2) Just like your desk, find out what needs to be where by trying new things. I find that email needs to be full-screen on a second monitor, and 'everything else' belongs on my l arger primary. I keep a few SSH terms open in virtual desktops so that I can have an open console when the poop hits the fan, but they're out of the way the rest of the time.
3) Use rsync or tar to backup your home directory frequently, because when you need to restore, you'll be glad you did. Most programming conventions in Linux make this much easier than in (say) Windows, as you don't have to worry about app config stored in weird places (registry), but you still need to be anal about backups.
4) Turn off the silly services to save CPU and Memory. 'chkconfig' in many modern distros (primarily redhat-based) will show you what's going to start at boot - turn off telnet, ftp (if you can use sftp), and the nfs daemons if you won't be serving NFS. Defaults suck, spend a few minutes tweaking these things and it'll help you much in the future.
5) Learn your favorite window manager well. If it's Gnome, or KDE, or whatever, learn it. Those of us who have been using Windows for a decade know the ins-and-outs of the Explorer interface, and it really saves us time - learning their equivalents in Linux will also save you time.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Group your running applications by tasks (i.e. browsing, email, development, etc.), and assign each of these tasks a virtual desktop (by remembering on which virtual desktop you grouped these applications). Then switching between different task domains becomes extremely fast, because you just have to click on the correct desktop in the virtual desktop app, and you have all apps you need to complete the task at hand instantly.
This is ways faster than switching between single applications or having them all on one single desktop, and having to dig your way through tons of windows to find the rigt program.
Oh, and use the session manager to save the session before you log-out, so the next time you log-in, you have all the apps you need already running, and on the same virtual desktops as before.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
The question you should ask is why the hell your company is giving you a "very high spec'd machine with dual-head 1600x1200 screens." if your work only "involves web/e-Mail/SSH access".
Really; is your company's IT department stupid? Is your company run by dot-com-bubble-wanna-be's who want to repeat the past? When your tasks are so system-resource-undemanding, why did they pay for that machine for you? You could do your work on a 486! Literally!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
1. Use WindowMaker. 2. Do everything in xterms, no actual x apps. Mutt, Lynx, you get the idea. MySQL command-line client for DB work. 3. Spend Sunday reading /., since nothing new will be posted, and you'll actually have to work. ;)
You are not the customer.
You want to save time on Linux Desktop... Switch to Windows XP...and save your self from hardware incompatibility issues...among other things...
/me ducks
"Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone"
I am faily new to linux, but maybe these will help...
I do everything on my Ubuntu laptop so and hibernate instead of logout... so I get lots of "personal" clutter in my "business" windows. Most flavors of Linux have 4 desktop spaces I believe. I use the desktops to sort these things. I usually have two for business stuff, the third for personal stuff, and the 4th as a "scratch" area. Aside from switching back and forth between business desktops both with IDE, shell, etc, it seems to save a lot of time.
I am not sure if it is a GNOME feature or what, but being able to easily customize panels is really handy. One of the premade panel tools you can add is the "sticky notes" which seem to save me a lot of time. Normally, I make lots of "to do" type lists and keep them in unsaved buffers in my IDE. If I let my battery die or restart without thinking, they are gone. The sticky notes thing just seems to help a lot.
I use IM for work. On windows, Trillian seemed to be very space and time efficiant. GAIM doesn't seem to be a good replacement. So... no help there.
Also, I waste lots of time getting my wireless running after switching locations (which I do a lot it seems). If that were more streamlined, I believe I would save a lot of time.
Just a thought.
As always, less is more (except for terminals). Have no desktop icons or fancy buttons, save the space for the applications that are open. A right-hand click on your desktop should give you access to your favourite apps across various categories (internet,programming,multimedia etc).
I typically have 5 desktops that I mouse scroll between each with one major application always open. The first three are firefox for web surfing, firefox for gmail, thunderbird for other email and then that leaves two for the task at hand (typically an editor and some terminals for programming)
Having a widescreen laptop is most useful for having normal applications open (like firefox/openoffice) on the left 2/3rds of the screen and terminals/irc/etc. open in smaller windows down the right hand side. This allows me to focus on the task at hand, but quickly perform other tasks as required.
I do all my web/e-Mail/SSH crap in a black and white terminal, and I LIKE IT!
I should follow up about the dual head thing. I have a dual head setup at work and I find that one monitor ends up being used for the most part and I just end up bleeding windows into the other monitor and leaving them there. Maybe its just that I'm not used to having dual monitors or something. So what I end up doing is putting the main monitor directly in front of me and the supplimental monitor off to the right. Then I put my email client (I use thunderbird at work) on the supplimental screen.
The only thing where I find dual monitors to be really useful is for running Qemu or VMWare in one screen and some terminals or other programs in the other. Also, its really nice if you need to run a 3D program like Blender. Especially since Blender's interface is so customizeable I ended up putting a quad TFR Camera view on one screen and free roaming view on the other.
alias su="xterm -fg white -bg darkred -e su" so when you su, you get a new xterm in colors to remind you that that xterm is root.
Use fluxbox. The tabs mean that you can stack up things like xterms.
If you run gnome panel, you can put drawers on it. The drawers can contain swallowed apps, such as xterms running top, tail syslog, watch processes, etc. So you can pop open a monitor drawer and xterms running text monitors emerge.
Check into 3ddesk. It's an applet that maps your desktops onto a 3d cylinder that can be rotated with the mousewheel for desktop switching. Much more useful than it sounds. The visual preview and positional awareness that it gives make it possible to use many more desktops than you ordinarily could without them becoming useless clutter like they can with traditional pagers.
I don't know why you're concerned about maximizing real estate with a dual-head display. I get by just fine with a 19 inch display.
That said, there are some technologies emerging that will allow you to use x11 functionality to use a laptop or additional workstation as a second (or third) screen controlled by the same desktop. Check into x2vnc.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Learn ruby/perl/python/something and automate *everything* the each time you find yourself repeating a task that could be easily parametrized. Most of this is an attitude thing. If repetitive tasks don't annoy you, then you're not going to be able to eliminate them from your life. It will never seem worth the effort.
Also, get a decent window manager like ion and learn its shortcuts. Developing more than a passing knowledge of Ion and Vim has doubled my productivity when debugging code. Ion makes one monitor feel like two, so I can imagine that on two it would be pretty damn good.
If you're like I used to be, you waste half to two-thirds of a second hundreds of times every day on minimizing and restoring windows. Less than a second each time sounds like nothing, but it can easily add up to half an hour or so every single shift.
Got icons on the desktop? Replace them with panel launchers. Use drawers if you have to; it's still faster to get to a launcher in a drawer than an icon on the desktop, and you aren't left with all your other windows minimized afterward. Keep the launchers you use with any frequency directly on the panel. I like to run one panel along the left side of the screen dedicated mostly to launchers (I do also keep a memory/swap/cpu meter there), and then keep the task list in another panel on the bottom edge of the screen, where I also keep a clock applet; many people would keep a new-mail-notification applet there.
Many window managers will also let you configure global keyboard shortcuts for launching certain applications and other common activities, such as maximizing or lowering the current window. I happen to use sawfish, but I'm sure many other window managers also provide this functionality.
Second thing, take your phone off the hook. Okay, maybe not. It *would* save a lot of time, though.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Man, SSH must really fly on that thing. Here's what you do: find a software developer who actually needs a high spec'd machine and trade him straight up for his Dell Attitude 6900. In my day (about a year ago) we called what you're using now a dumb terminal.
I found that using KDE vastly increased my productivity.
I used to use Enlightenment and a mix of Mozilla, XFMail, OpenOffice, and a variety of other random programs. But then I took a week and learned how to effectively use KDE. It's very well integrated, and that level of integration pays off. Once you learn how one application works, the others become quite intuitive.
I also found it to be far more responsive, too. Konqueror flies like a bullet, and KMail is quite swift. The best part is that KDE keeps getting better. Every new release brings substantial improvements. And those are improvements and innovations upon what is already extremely usable! The great keep getting better, it would seem.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The main trick is to keep your thoughts focused by getting into a few habits. I also use a dual head system but with 8 different workspaces setup in the workspace switcher (so a total of 16 virtual screens). In order to get the most out of this system, I actually use the switcher's facility for naming the workspaces and change them from the usual 1,2,3..8 to something meaningful. When I work on a new project, I rename the workspaces if necessary and then, for instance, always open the libraryXYZ project in my IDE in the correctly named space.
If you use Gnome Terminal, learn to use the Profiles facility and color code or at least name different terminal windows/tabs. You can even associate custom commands to run, rather than the shell (for instance, one of my profiles launches something like "ssh -C -L3128:localhost:3128 -L10025:localhost:25 -L... remotebox" to tunnel important activity through SSH so all I need is double click an icon). Pretty much every terminal app has facilities for doing this. Create Profiles for repetitive tasks and use shortcuts on your desktop to activate them.
You might also consider reserving blocks of time in which to shutdown gaim, your email client and phone.
HTH
Here we go...http://kegel.com/linux/comfort/, but was surprised to read that OpenOffice2.0 takes 5 minutes to save a 12MB file. This to me is unacceptable.
I have a very high spec'd machine
you'll be able to run OpenOffice.org and get work done before you have to clock out.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Nothing profound here, but...
I have a Gnome desktop, dual-display, but with a laptop, so I keep all my controls on one desktop. I have a window list on the bottom, with just the windows, desktop switcher, show-desktop button. On top, I have the application menus and such, shortcuts to terminals that I often use (quick-launch ssh sessions and such), and the nifty toys (volume meter, screenshot, et cetera). On the left side, I have this little panel on auto-hide, so that if I can mouse over it I can see all my shiny CPU/network/etc usage meters, and a few obscure but useful shortcuts.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Try Yakuake. Its a Quake like console for KDE. The best thing it can be hidden/shown with one key ( F12 default) so it doesn't steal your screen estate and can be enabled instantly when you need it.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
I tried that once. The machine was called 'zaphod'.
;-)
My recommendation would be to buy another monitor and go triple-headed.
I've been very happy with 'triphod' for the last three years.....
I keep a konsole window open with 5-10 shells open. shift-left shift-right to swith between.
Stay logged in on multiple machines and it is easy to swap between.
I found that I could get an extra five hours work a day out of our Linux engineers by making the following change to their workstations.
/etc/hosts
echo " 207.46.250.119 slashdot.org" >>
Install Microsoft Windows.
how about instead of every linux program being named blah_01-.52a_file.whatever maybe they could just name it Blah.tgz? gets to be a pain in the command line having to type out every detail
If it's spec'd like you say, then I'd use xinerama (or the like) and cook up one huge desktop, i.e., 3200x2400...
Get your Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Here for FREE! - http://fedora.redhat.com
Also consider using KDE's "Mac like" menus feature. This will save you time, as it makes the menus easier to hit, but it will also save you more screen real estate.
Finally, don't use KDE or GNOME, instead use the crudest WM you can find coupled with a bunch of XTerms. As true hackers know, only the command line is your true path to the force that is Unix-like computing. Trust your instincts, learn how "find" and "grep" work (remember, your final test will be when you build your own find and grep commands.)
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Want to make the most of your screen real estate? Try using a tiling window manager, such as ion or (my favorite) wmii. If you're an emacs fanatic, try ratpoison; the keybindings are similar. You'll never resize again.
...use a different operating system.
I got the biggest productivity improvement by getting rid of the eye-candy gnome or kde window manager, and switching to ION (http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/). This is a tabbed window manager that defaults to showing one full-screen window per screen.
It uses keyboard shortcuts for everything, like switching windows, opening terminals resizing windows, etc. I don't need to touch the mouse, and I never spend time lining up my windows so I can see 3 things on screen at once without overlapping.
Anything is possible, except skiing through revolving doors.
Ignorance is bliss,
Happiness is mandtory,
See how it all works out?
Use your shell, and learn to be deft and efficient with the keybindings and GNU userland tools. There is no substitute in the GUI world.
"He was a wise man who invented beer." - Plato
"That being said, to me it's always been about the comments, and the rich experience they bring us here."
Yeah! Rich food and heartburn go together. Pavlov would have a field day with this site.
Microsoft! Arf! Arf! Arf!
RIAA/MPAA/Government/Business/Copyright! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! *damn I wet myself* Arf! Arf!
Linux/LISP/XML/AJAX! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!
Women:
Taco/Cowboy Neal/Dupe! Arf! *burp* Arf! Arf! *blat!* excuse me.
Setup your environment to be productive. We use linux on our desktops and most have dual head systems as well. Normally we have to work on multiple products that require different toolkits, python paths and libraries. Since we use bash as our shell, we have functions that can be easily executed to switch environments on the fly, which also setup our CMS clients (i.e. cvs, svn, perforce, etc.). Write scripts that do all the repetitive tasks. ftp'ing, telnet'ing can almost always be automated via python or some other script language. You can also do some fancy ssh automation by setting up keys for your machines. That will eliminate at least all the user/pass login procedures for you.
Making better use of your desktop real estate means getting rid of a lot of junk. If you haven't already, I'd try saying goodbye to KDE/Gnome and getting the lightest possible window manager for the job: That's Fluxbox, ICEwm, Fvwm, or the desktop environment Xfce. (I'm low on sadism, so I won't recommend TWM. Anybody that 1337 wouldn't be posting this question.) This doesn't sound like much, but trust me, when you do away with that extra time waiting for KDE to load, you'll be faster and only have (in Fluxbox's case) a tiny slit in your way. No icons cluttering things up (yeah, we need a home directory icon on the desktop when it's in our menu, too! Sheesh!). Every Linux program on your system can be started from any window manager's menu, it's just a matter of editing the menu to launch the program. Too bothered to edit text menus? Then from the console, try "kicker" for KDE's panel, "gnome-panel" for Gnome's, and "xfce4-panel" for Xfce's, depending on what you have installed. I've tried them all and they work even from TWM!
As for time-saving: the key here is "automate". Anything you type in a terminal more than once is grounds for automation. Simply take the same commands you type and save them on a line each in a plain text file with the line "#!/bin/bash" at the top and the line "end" at the bottom. Save that file somewhere in your executable path (type "echo $PATH" if you don't know), and type "chmod +x [name of your program]". You can now execute it just like any other system program.
The next level of automation is programs that require interaction. Two work-arounds exist for this: "Here" documents are little scriptlets you can slip into Bash scripts to do simple keyboard commands for interacting with command-line programs that insist on recieving input. The more sophisticated approach is Tcl/Tk's "expect", which can be used to script damn-near anything (take a command-line web browser like lynx and feed it an expect script with the right instructions, and you can auto-post B1FF comments to Slashdot, even! (Provided you had a nick signed in.), sorry, guys, the secret's out!) I can't think of anything having to do with ssh and email accounts that couldn't be handled with all of the above.
This might be overkill, but anybody who's read "Beginning Linux Programming" by Neil Matthew and Richard Stones, courtesy of www.wrox.com, wouldn't have to post this question. I promise you could skip the GTK and Qt parts and brush up on Bash, at least, which is easier than BASIC on the Apple ][.
Doubtless, part of the indiference/hostility in here is because this is also the kind of question spammers ask, and you wouldn't find any people on Slashdot who deal with too much spam, now would you? I don't mind answering because, if you're a *good* wizard, you deserve to know this stuff as well as I do, and if you're a *bad* wizard, I haven't given you a damn thing you couldn't have gotten from a few hours of Googling.
Get proficient with screen (lets you use one xterm as if it were more than one ... let's you keep consoles open even when you kill the xterm and you can reconnect to them later)
CHOOSE between emacs and vi. Don't spend more than five minutes making this decision. Become proficient in the editor of your choice. Don't talk to anyone about your choice once you've made it.
That is why I reduce my mouse usage to the minimum.
Using a high productivity WM (IceWM in my case, but there are others) enables me to make use of several keyboards shortcuts, multiple desktops and so on.
I also use Mutt to read e-mail. It enables me to read and reply to e-mails much faster than with anything else (Thunderbird etc etc). I would recomend, tho, that you fully understands its features, otherwise your productivity will drop. Quick search and display limiting, as long as color and folder hooks can save you a lot of time.
All in all, I try to take the best of both words (GUI and CLI). I have, most of the time, about 8 xterm's along with Firefox opened in different virtual desktops. Using bash's autocompletion makes it easy to find the host I want to ssh to (start typing the hostname and hit tab).
Also, I try using my notebook as often as possible. The location of the touchpad allows me to use it without removing my hands from the keyboard, which also gives me another speedboost.
I have keyboard shortcuts to all aplications I use often. CRTL+ALT+T open a regular xterm, whicl CRTL+ALT+W opens a verticaly maximized one. And so on, and so forth.
I have tried to use all the "nice" window managers, like KDE and Gnome. In all cases, I suffered a severe drop of productivity, since I had to use the mouse much more often.
morcego
Use Ion3 (a tiled window manager) to take advantage of screen realestate.
Bind all the awesome keys
Use screen to have multiple terminals which can be destroyed
Use xclip to copy from clipboard into apps, vim, mozilla, etc.
It might embarrass the editors.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
You get to use a Linux workstation at work. You suck. :)
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Use screen, have it "raise" windows on events... useful once you have mastered things like expect... Now since you have less xterms open, more room for Quake III areana :-d
With log watchers. Transparent aterm's running "watch tail -n 10 /var/log/apache/server_log" and the like. Evven when partially covered by your terminals and web browsers and such, you'll notice when something new or unexpected pops up. Some heavily scripted tcpdump could also be useful if you keep an eye on security, too.
On my laptop, depending on whether the relevant watcher is better suited to vertical presentation (top, netstat) or horizontal (most log files), I can arrange 4 or so that don't get completely covered with my windows all over the place. Two big screens would at least double that.
i actually have 3 monitors, and high spec is relitive but im also at 1600x1200. anyway, one screen for irc/email/web/chat/gkrellm etc. the other screen has a bunch of ssh windows open. window manager is blackbox but thats out of lazyness, i actually prefer enlightenment. gnu screen is your friend.
the other set up is x2vnc to go from mac to linux to windows (linux in the middle) usually when doing this, from windows ill run gaim and firefox over X11 back off the same linux box because i dont give windows a default route(1) that way i can still use that screen to save space. in this case, i usually have web and sometimes other docs (like pdfs) on the mac so its all spread over differnt spaces. again, all the work(or at least the ssh sessions) itself is on the center screen (linux)
for the X11 apps on windows, cygwin with X11 over openssh. the private key is protected by EFS instead of sshs built in. on startup, it launches a gnome-panel on top. speakers are still plugged into the linux box so sound still works, ive even run xmms from cygwin this way.
even though im using x2vnc here, i keep a usb extention cable from all three near the monitor, and the keyboard and mouse on a tiny 4 port hub. that way its easy to change which one the hardware goes to (linux is running x2vnc since its in the middle in both cases) this has the added bonus of the mac as a convinient guest terminal from time to time. (just grab a mouse and keyboard from the pile)
but most of the time, its just the linux box turned and two monitors. i have done 6 on linux by using 2 pci cards along with the agp one, but dont have any real need for that.
(1) i dont feel safe letting widnows access the internet directly. yes, i realize there is a simple 165 step method to armor windows to deal with the internet, but i dont know windows all that well and really have better things to do with my time.
In engineer friendly Google, everyone has a linux or G5 workstation with dual 24" flat panel monitors (in addition to a sweet Mac laptop)... Except for Legal, Sales, HR, and Marketing that is... they just get an IBM thinkpad laptop.
Consolidate all your widgets to one monitor and use the other for your work. this lets you focus on work with one screen, while having your widget-fix on the other screen. Keep your XMMS (Or other MP3 Jukebox program) over there as well. One clutter screen and one clean screen is the best way to work for me.
Use that second display for copy/pasting from one application to another, without having to scroll around a tiny window. Likewise, you could also have one screen for coding and debug output and the other for runtime programming. Of course, I haven't done this in Linux, but it is something i've done in MS Visual Studio... The concept should work there...
Switch to a window manager such as Ion. It's a far more natural way to manage your windows than a conventional window manager. Honestly, words can't describe how much better Ion feels...it's something you have to use to understand. I only came to the realisation that Ion beats conventional WMs after I started using Ion.
The learning curve is somewhat steep (hint: read the man pages, and then learn how to redo your keybindings...eliminate the ones you won't use and rebind the ones that clobber other things to other keys), but if you're really serious about efficiency, Ion is the way to go. This goes double for a 1600x1200 dual-head setup, where you have plenty of space to set up your tiles (note: I'd recommend using a true dual-head setup instead of Xinerama, which tends to fuck with Ion).
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Stop fooling yourself thinking that spending hours tweaking everything will save time. Just admit that you like tweaking :P
... weak.
I'll echo the "Use WindowMaker" mantra. The only reason I'm running Gnome now is for the little graphical workspace switcher. I'm still upset that the window thumbnails don't dynamically update their contents anymore like Enlightenment or even older versions of Gnome.
I usually configure my window managers to use Meta + various mouse keys to move/resize windows. Gnome's Metacity does not allow you to move the window title above the top of the screen - very annoying when you want to put, say, a web browser's various rows of buttons off-screen so you can fit more precious content onto your screen (more so than you could get with using the full screen view, which isn't available for all apps). Window Maker does the right thing, and allows you to move the window off the top of the screen (but only if you use the Meta-click technique, so the titlebar only disappears if you prove that you know how to move the window back without it).
I also configure focus-follows-mouse, and disable raise-on-click. This allows me to organize my workspace and have more control, say, copying and pasting stuff between windows without the "behind" window popping to the foreground unless I tell it to (by Meta-clicking on it or clicking on the titlebar/frame).
Configure a larger virtual desktop in the Xorg.conf if you really want more scrollable space. I imagine this would be more complicated with your dual-monitor setup, though... maybe you just want to add a few pixels to the top of each screen. I trust that you've read and configured the extra Xorg directives that came with your Nvidia / ATi drivers to optimize your Xorg.conf already.
Also useful to configure some means of "pushing" windows back, usually by middle-clicking on the titlebar/frame or Meta-down.
I've heavily configured gkrellm - it works great as an app launcher that works under any window manager, in addition to doing all of its normal monitoring. It can really give you a good feeling for what your computer is doing, when it's finished downloading or compiling or transferring to USB drives, how well your RAID throughput is behaving, etc From the default, I usually tweak it to use a better theme (the default wastes a few columns of pixels on the sides!), show system CPU time and network TX / disk writes as inverted, and of course set it to sticky so it's always in its corner when I switch virtual desktops.
Learn to use gnu screen. It's indispensible for managing multiple consoles. I usually start mine as "screen -e ^Zz", since I use Ctrl-a quite more often than Ctrl-z... what a silly default.
Give the Galeon web browser a serious try. It has much better tab management than Mozilla, even with Mozilla's tabextensions plugin. Plus, it remembers the last tab state after crashes by default... why isn't that a standard Mozilla feature yet??!
Check out Hotkeys for making use of those extra multimedia button keys on your keyboard for launching apps.
Does anyone know of a mechanism for launching apps using keystrokes like Win-e for explorer.exe under MS windows? Best I could do outside of mapping "extra" keys with hotkey is to map the Super key to gnome's "Run command" dialog and then type in the app
Well, have fun.
If you crank up your history list to a few thousand entries and set it to forget dupes, you can recall any command you've issued in the last couple of months with just a couple of keystrokes.
If you can do it without crashing, that is!
I gave it up because of stability issues, but using window translucency, tinting, and shading (via Xorg's Composite and Render extensions) REALLY helped improve my productivity.
Seriously.
It allowed me to keep an eye on multiple window levels at once, yet everything but my current window being tinted darker ensured that my focus stayed where I needed it. That and the shadowed windows also helped me identify things much faster.
If it's just used for eye candy, it can be distracting, but used properly I found it helped me a great deal.
Get enlightenment.
I also have a two headed machine at work -- very handy (just wrote about this recently on Perlmonks). Here's how I have my system set up using Windowmaker:
When I get in, I start the xterm for mutt, but first run ssh-add so that any future ssh operations just go straight through without a login.
Anytime during the day I can go directly to the screen I want with a keystroke -- none of this peering at a little group of boxes and trying to click on it with the mouse. And I have to say the dual-headed thing is dynamite .. I'd much rather have two 19" screens than one monster screen. It just works.
... your calm levelheadedness is not welcome here :)
If you want to maximize use of screen real estate there is nothing better than the ion window manager, especially if you have multiple monitors. It's the only manager I know of that lets you have a separate set of virtual desktops for each monitor that can be switched independently of one another. You will lose a lot of time, however, reconfiguring all the keyboard commands to not suck.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Hi, I got a twin turbo V8 Ferrari with a custom leather interior, fully sick sound system and a lot of chicks in the back seat, and I was wondering how I might be more productive with it. All I do is drive it from my moms place to the pizza store. It goes from 0-60mph in about .05 seconds. It has a $30,000, 7 speed electronic shift transmission installed.
Any tips? Hello slashdotters? You might want to re-read how fast it is and how many chicks I got in the back seat.
What a stupid topic this is.
1. I reckon two screens is just a complete waste of time. You can alt-tab (or whatever) quicker than you can move your neck and eyes across.
2. Learn a scripting language, then a programming language. Automate your repetitive tasks. Geez does someone even need to explain this?
3. Ditch the mouse - or at least attempt to. Learn keyboard shortcuts for everything. This will save you a LOT of time! Well worth the effort involved.
4. Learn to delegate and prioritise your work.
5. Learn to ignore things (and people) that waste your time.
As said before for every application you use frequently: bind it. but dont forget to bind desktop management shortcuts and window management shortcuts such as shadow, send to desktop, , minimize, resize, change dekstop, etc.. I find that I usually need only one screen and 5 different fluxbox workspaces to carry out my tasks imagine what you could do with 2 screens! Fluxbox has tons of interesting window management commands that can be binded to keys, such as:
Stick, shade window (makes only the window's bad visible), Toggle Decor (removes the pesky window bar from the window), Kill, and others.
I don't have a dual-headed setup at work, (although I could if I wanted to), I use mostly a wireless laptop. Most of my wireless clients (laptop, pda) are Windows... using programs like putty, filezilla, and vnc, and the best multi-desktop util in the world called AltDesk. (http://www.astonshell.com/ - not free but only $15 to register). Vim for windows (or another good text editor, emeditor free) also comes in handy.
But my machine at home is linux (and actually my first workstation at work was a Win2k machine until the power supply blew up, switched to Linux and had it dual-headed for a while).
But my Linux workstation at home is mostly fluxbox with about 5-6 desktops, things like ssh, screen (of course), firefox, thunderbird, umm vim, gkrellm, grdesktop, to name a few. Fluxbox is small, fast and awesome. It's easy to configure and the "mouse wheel through desktops" comes in handy, available via keys if your hands are nowhere near the mouse. Of course VMware (player or otherwise) can be a help too.
I'm a big proponent of "the right tool for the job". And when it comes to popular key-combinations (alt-arrow keys to cycle through desktops for example), my setup makes it nice to use the same keys to change desktops on Linux in fluxbox that I use in Windows under AltDesk.
And screen+ssh is definitely a killer combo. I had took a class over the summer at a local university, and they had Windows 2000 Server PCs. I downloaded the putty, filezilla, and vnc viewer executables, that's all I needed. None of these utils installed, they kept their configurations in a neat place, and when I left, everything was removed and cleaned up. It makes it extremely easy for remote management from anywhere when the majority of your work is on the internet.
FLR
root@box:/etc# echo "slashdot.org 127.0.0.1" >> /etc/hosts
DYWYPI?
One way to save a little time is to synchronize your Firefox bookmarks between your new Linux machine and your other machines (like the Windows PC you use at work).
k s_between_different_computers
http://paininthetech.com/synchronize_your_bookmar
Easy
execute the following as root:
echo "127.0.0.1 slashdot.org www.slashdot.org" >>
After this one command, you will start making better use of your time.
a usefull command
now, go visit yahoo music site
Does anyone have a (serious) suggestion for me?
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
I had never heard of enlightenment, so i googled and found www.enlightenment.org, but firefox says it can't find it. is it usually there?
Fluxbox!
Set your screens to 72DPI as well.
I can't stress enough how elegantly simple and yet useful screen can be:
-Lost connectivity to the server? SSH back in and "reconnect" to your previous session.
-Kicked something off on your laptop and want to leave? Disconnect the running ssh session and reconnect tomorrow (or later at home) to pickup where you left off.
-Crap, what was that filename I wanted to use again? Start another screen session instead of another SSH session and flip back when you find out what you needed. You can even mark/cut/paste between sessions.
Kick screen off in your profile and never look back...
--- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
Almost every nerd I know (myself included) wastes more time trying to set up the machine 'just so' to make every task super conveinent and easy than they actually save. I suggest getting the machine in a minimally working configuration and only trying to save time when a task becomes really burdensome and repetitive. Even then I would think twice and ask how much time it really takes and how much time it would take to make it faster.
Of course that wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun. That's what you should do if you are really interested in saving time. If you just want to have the enjoyment of knowing your machine is optimally set up to do whatever it is you do then follow the other suggestions you find here.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
... is your friend AKA sticky.
...
.. ... ahm connected by x2vnc or synergy.... (oh right now it has a blue screen and does not start ... crap)
I usually have firefox sticky on my left monitor. the middle is an editor (of choice), or mail, or gaim/irc (bitchx) optionally other..
I just feel like I must have a browser with all, as links come from all these
on the 3rd head I have a browser as well. and the 4th it is winamp an explorer
now the 3rd and 4th head is an other machine with that other "w" system that is a necessity
I am kinda getting sick of gnome with dual and looking into enlightenment (remember windows properties suck in gnome, and I am tired restarting things and organizing, even that it happens once a week or so - yes we have power outs here, and my ups is crap)
I was, once upon a time, a young developer in the same position. I had a fast computer, dual flat screens, and free reign to do as I pleased. Here is what I found to be most helpful (assuming you are using KDE/Gnome, but should be appropriate to most desktop environments):
* Create key bindings. If you don't go to the mouse as often, not only will you be more productive, but you will also prevent RSI's. I could open a terminal window, browser, maximize both, and move either to another virtual desktop with just two fingers on the left hand.
* speaking of virtual desktops, Use virtual desktops. I like having everything maximized, but I quickly run out of space that way. Normally, I have the terminals on one desktop, the code on another, my reference documents/browser windows on the third, and then the forth for everything else --normally a running version of the project I'm fixing. Figure out what apps you use most, and designate a v.desk to each which makes it easier for the mind to find that information it was looking for.
* Love the terminal window. By making use of aliases, scripts and various other 'hacks,' most tasks can be boiled down to a handful of keystrokes. It is worth the time to learn either shell scripting and/or perl so that more complicated tasks can still be done rapidly with a reduced chance of error.
* Thing about the ergonomics. You are obviously a professional computer jockey, otherwise you wouldn't have dual monitors being driven by linux. Until your computer responds to 'computer,' you're going to need your wrists, so take five minutes to consider how you could improve the layout to minimize the chances of an RSI or other strains and pains -- this includes neck strains which is a very common pain resulting from dual monitors. Although this is not a time saving tip per se, it will add years to your useful geek life.
Well, that is all of the advice I can think of right now. The most important thing you need to consider is ways to eliminate repetition. Anytime I type anything more than 3 times, or click an icon that is more than 2 levels deep, I will consider, if only for a second, alternative means to envoking that task.
Good luck and good hunting.
About: root-tail is a program that allows printing of text directly to the X11 root window wherever you choose, much like running rxvt with a pixmap background but without the hassle and with more features.
Some code I use with it (there's TONS of options):
Dollar Highway Financial News
Do you know that you can incrementally search history with CTRL-r ? That alone saves me a bunch of time, you have access to really powfull line editing (ie cutting whole words backwards and pasting them with only 2 key strokes) but the shortcuts are weird. You must learn them to fully enjoy how a shell is more efficient than a GUI. Hint: try the emacs shortcuts.
. . . as far as I know, you can only tile them with no overlapping parts, and sometimes funny things happen when resizing terminals.
If all you want to do is stack two or three terminals in a vertical column without rearranging borders often, then it works great.
I've never been able to get anything more complicated to work reliably.
(And then again, half my terminals are usually logged into remote machines and running screen anyway. Even with compatible key-bindings, running screens within screens is something my brain just can't handle without constant goofups. So, keeping multiple xterms around is hard to avoid.)
Here's what I have on my desktop as I write this:
4 monitors on 2 systems:
1 on a Windoze box with a TV card in it running Win2000 on a V95 Optiquest 19" at 1280x1024
2 NEC Accusync LCD71VM at 1280x1024 on a nVidia dual-head and another V95 Optiquest at 1600x1200 on a 3D Rage (for editing graphics sometimes but see below for normal use)
Ignoring the Windows box as a necessary evil for times when I have to debug a customer who hasn't switched yet, we move on to the Linux box (still running RH9 but in the process of moving to FC4)
I run 3 separate desktops instead of a unified one - mostly because I have not found a way to have enough virtual desktops to satisfy me any other way. I run 2x15 (30) in each screen for a total of 90 virtual desktops - and have seen times when I have something in all of them - but not always.
I'm generally in one of 3 mental modes - and use the screens differently for each:
1 - general system monitoring and maintenance - read e-mail, watch logs, read documentation, etc.
2 - major system updates/maintenance - configuring and copying software, etc.
3 - working with graphics and web site creation and updates
In 1 I have system monitoring visuals on the right (1600x1200) monitor of various flavors - xload, xosview, eximon - started from a single script (showall - see below), working screens (xterms, web browsers, etc.) with things like slashdot and groklaw plus other documentation and web sites I'm working with in the middle (and sometimes on the left) and e-mail on the left. I'll preempt the e-mail for more screens if necessary but tend to have it back most times.
In 2 I'll have screens on the left on a new system, on the right on the old and documentation in the middle
In 3 I'll do editing on the V95 because it has reasonable color fidelity compared to the LCDs, while I select and categorize (gThumb) on the central screen and do command line stuff on the left LCD (ImageMagick etc.)
I start programs in the various desktops in a consistent manner all the time. Each of the 3 monitors has a slightly different mix with most consitency at each end and the central ones more "ad hoc"
In general, the right screens on all desktops are used for access to the major servers I monitor. Most active on the right, second most active to its left, and so on toward the left (currently 8 machines are showing)
On the left screen's desktops I start at the left with e-mail and local root and personal items, then web screens and on the right, xterms to systems
On the center screen's desktops I start on the left with local (to my workstation) xterms, then web screens and on the right xterms to systems
On the right screen's desktops I start with music (xmms and volume control) upper left with the "showall" screen next right. Bottom left is vmWare with another Win2k instance in it, used for "dangerous" stuff because I can restore it with a copy command from the command line. Other vmWare sessions to it's right as necessary. In the center desktops I'll have more web screens and on the right are xterms
In the center portion of each screen I start a browser as necessary. I'll typically have one each of Mozilla, Firefox and something else up on the 3 screens, with Firefox in the center one with as many as 8-10 sessions (press ^N 7 times and use the mouse to distribute the screens to desktops) on each of the center 8-10 virtual desktops.
Left-most top web screen (5th from left actual desktop) has Slashdot and below that is Groklaw. Next right to each of them are Nagios and MRTG on my main monitoring machines and to the Nagios' right is a session into the main e-mail configuration machine. The rest home on Google or my main web menu (which times out to refresh to google after 2 minutes) and may have anything that strikes my fancy on
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Use Xsu to get a graphical su login automatically when you need it (configuration varies). Instead of opening a new terminal and typing "su [enter] password [enter] vi /etc/mpd.conf [enter]," you'll just be typing "password [enter]" whenever you need to access something as root.
Use a graphical file explorer like Rox to navigate and sort through directories quickly. Don't rely on ls for everything; it is far faster and more flexible to organize files graphically. Dragging a box and one click-drag can replace dozens of keystrokes across multiple commands.
If you always startup X after you login, then have X startup automatically. No reason to type "startx" every time.
Use Conky for system monitoring.
Let normal users halt or reboot the system if appropriate. In many, many cases it's silly to maintain the *nix default behavior of only letting root shutdown/reboot the system. If you're running a server with dozens of remote users then yes, this would be unwise. If it's your personal workstation though, it's completely reasonable.
Use "slocate" instead of "find." Pardon me if this is obvious, but I still see too many *nix diehards waiting for "find" to finish when there's a perfectly up to date slocate DB ready for searching. "find" is nearly obsolete.
Have your drives automounted with Submount. It's pretty sad that something like this is not standard in the 2.6 kernel. Typing a command every time you want to read a CD looks pathetic to the average Windows user used to autorun or clicking "My Computer."
That's all I have for now. Basically, I liberally automate outdated procedures (which many *nix users still tolerate). This makes day-to-day operations much smoother overall, and doesn't disrupt tasks by having to constantly bring up new terminal windows.
I have found that no matter how much screen real estate you have, it isn't too much. Once you get used to it is really rarely even "enough". The desktop setup I've come up with and use universally across all of my machines has become by far the most useful and usable of any I've ever used on any OS.
It's sawfish, straight sawfish (sawfish used to be used as the default underlying window manager in a lot of distros' gnome builds) with a custom (and readily availabe on the internet) theme called "Lines" that loses you all of your borders and all of your widgets and replaces them with a single pixel border. Sawfish is crazily configurable and scriptable. The user config file is written in Scheme (really easy to figure out just from looking at it but also frighteningly powerful once you start trying things).
Everything's a keystroke for me, I have a keystroke to pop up an X-term, one for a web browser, one for an email client, one for my favorite media player, one for gaim, one to increase the volume, one to decrease it, etc. ad infinitum. I have a keystroke set up that lets me hold control and click any window to drag it (from anywhere in the window, not limited by borders here), another to resize it (again from anywhere in the window). Want a keystroke that does a whole series of things? Fine, it's all perfectly legible in the config file. Font stuff, printing stuff, it's all in my setup. Setting it up requires a little work the first time around after which point you just keep a tarball of your settings backed up somewhere so you can just unpack them when you have to migrate between boxes. Sawfish has no no taskbars of its own(in the context menu one of the submenus is an open window list that includes minimized things, etc and if you really need a taskbar you can choose any number of ones that are available out there. A friend of mine with a similar setup uses xfce4's taskbar whatsit... I personally hate taskbars taking up my screen real estate).
Yup, can't have too much screen space. Always have to make the best use of it that you can. I often end up with many 10s of xterms open doing various things and any number of browser windows each of which contains a various number of tabs, etc. I've really never been more productive.
-----------------------------------------
Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
For starters, run an ssh-agent on your machine, and then use public key authentication when you authenticate to ssh sessions. That's one of my favorite time savers, prevents needing to enter a password with each log in.
M anual/custom-guide/s1-openssh-client-config.html
Here's a decent resource on how to set up pub key authentication:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-
I run vnc with icewm, so I Can keep xchat, rtin, gaim, ssh terminals that never close. Very nice.
Then you can play with KDE or Gnome, and never have to worry about losing your active sessions.
IceWM also can snap window edges, support gnome and kde. So its my favorite for vnc.
Added benefit, you can vnc from another computer on the net and have your desktop, like using your laptop on wifi from the living room.
And you even run multiple VNC servers on the same machine, have one with kde, or gnome, etc, but you loose accelerated gfx.
No, I will have to disagree. I don't think time is saving Linux desktop tips. Anyone care to discuss?
I recommend running Xdmx and xmove. Possibly NX as well.
Xdmx will allow you to have very, very flexible control over how your dual monitor setup works. It not only supports your local two monitors, but will allow you to strap network pc's/monitors on to your existing setup with little fuss. I ran a six induvidual laptops as my primary display at work for some time with xdmx, and it worked very well. The only downside was my desktop was not quite beefy enough to handle a display size of 3072x1536. It also handles bezel sizes, if you prefer the "looking through a window" perspective versus xinerama's standard continuous desktop. It will support just about any monitor layout you want.
xmove gives you screen-like functionality for your desktop. Get up from your workstation, jump on a laptop with wifi, and xmove will pull the display output across the network - just like screen. Send the applications back to your desktop, and shut your laptop down. Bazing!
NX suppliments this with fantastic compression and will allow you to do stupid things, like do xmove/remote x work at home. Or resume a particularly stunning game of bejewled.
Is it ever better than just writing a few lines in some scripts in your ~/bin directory?
Un
It's the quickest way to get modded up...
/. people.
crazy backwards
"why is kde so unloved here in the USA?"
I'm guessing it's the very american "Not invented here" syndrome.
Good technologies don't have a chance in the USA if it isn't to be actively developed there. KDE is from the germans. OCaml from the french. Pascal never got a chance against USA own C, even having the same capabilities but much nicer language features, like being a real block structured language with real lexical scoping.
Python was to die a slow death against Perl hadn't Guido Van Rossum moved over to the country. Perhaps the japanese guy behing Ruby should move over to so it can be considered the intelectual property of an american? perhaps then ruby would get a boost...
Examples abound...
I don't feel like it...
Take one of your screens and rotate it 90 degrees. Then dedicate it to a full-screen web-browser. Most websites benefit from extended vertical size. I have a 1600x1024 SGI LCD that I use just that way and it is great - I rarely ever have to scroll web pages anymore because most are less than 1600 pixels tall.
I agree with everything the above said, but I would add:
* SED is the shiznit
I thought I "knew" UNIX, but until you know SED, and every other freaking cool command you are just getting by. Proper use of the command line has saved me enourmous time. I never took the time to read a UNIX command book page by page, and that was a mistake.
Take everything you know about unix and throw it away once a year to (re)read a comprehensive manual.
Also:
* ION is indeed the shiznit
ION is fanastic as long as you are not doing GUI programming. That is the only reason why I don't use it now. Now I use gnome, with keybindings to vaguely approximate ION.
Don't allow you computer to connect to slashdot. This is the best way to improve efficiency on any computer for anyone reading this.
The single most effective thing for me getting more efficient at work was to change from gnome to ion3. ion3 is always fullsized windows, so you cant move windows around, they are always maximized and that makes me work instead of clicking and resizing and moving the window about. Go for ion3 --tuite
-- My site
While Gentoo can be an extreemly powerful and FULLY customizable distro, I found myself spending a large portion of my time compiling/tweaking/fixing my distro rather doing my work.
I've since switched to a debian-based distro (http://www.kubuntu.org/) to minimize the amount of time I spend installing/tweaking/fixing my distro.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
1. Check yr email once a day.
2. Ditch the dual head for a single 19 inch monitor (save some money and yr neck).
3. Browse the web after work.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
http://ask.slashdot.org/~Hackeron/journal/101301
Any links to how-to's on screen, besides the recent one on Newsforge/Linux.com?
/tmp/kde-myusername to check the crashed log file for what tabs I had open prior to crashing, which allows me to duplicate the crashed session of konqueror.
I'm using a client booting off a knoppix cd, where I then ssh into my file server and also monitor web server logs from a web server on a different public ip address. Logging into my file server (which was once my desktop) allows me to use konqueror with my old bookmarks, along with all the other configuration settings in konqueror, kmail, and all the other kde and non-kde destkop config settings. So what I'm basically doing is starting a knoppix bash screen on the knoppix desktop, and ssh'ing into the file server, logging on as my normal user on the file server, then starting konqueror, kmail, and other apps from the command line while ssh'd in. This allows me to start konqueror with a titlebar caption that includes the date and time of starting, which allows me to figure out which instance of konqueror crashed, so I can go into
Thanks to the long uptimes (measured in months), I can keep konqueror sessions open as long as I want. With multiple desktops, I keep frequently visited sites on one konqueror session on one desktop, a second desktop with additonal frequently visited sites on konqueror, a third desktop when using konqueror for ssh/fish drag and drop between ssh'd boxes, etc.
The problem I run into, and which I thought screen could solve, is that I'd like to be able to shut down my desktop from time to time, while still keeping the konqueror sessions running. I thought I could do this with screen, but from my trials it appears that the screen session remains, but the konqueror/X app dies when detaching screen sessions.
Thinking about it further, I'm guessing that vnc or tightvnc would be a better solution for what I'm trying to do. Run everything on the file server (which has X running 24/7 anyway), log into the desktop through a vnc session, pickup the konqueror session sitting on the file server desktop, then shutdown vnc, shutdown the knoppix client, while keeping the konqueror sessions running. Then when logging back in, use vnc to re-establish the connections to the currently running konqueror sessions.
Is screen the solution to my problem, or am I better off with vnc? Links to how-to articles?
Then fucking switch for real and stop whining here.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I mean, you asked slashdot... surely there is a witty thing I coudl say about that *if* I had some nice coffee this morning.
But I haven't, but for all you family guy lovers:
In Soviet Russia, Linux Saves Time With You!
please type the word in this image: poured
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I dunno what your pref settings are, but here's what I see - both via my account, and with a default view (not logged in, different browser):
----
Ask Slashdot: Time Saving Linux Desktop Tips?
Posted by Cliff on Sunday November 27, @07:32PM
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Developers: Ubuntu Certified for IBM DB2
Posted by Hemos on Sunday November 27, @03:44PM
----
Less than 4 hours. Try some decaf? Or if you really want to suck away your free time (and this is not a plug; I'm very careful with my use of this site... it's dangerous unless you really have nothing useful to accomplish) try Metafilter.com.
But I suspect your prefs simply locked out a bunch of stories this afternoon, and you didn't bother to check the real front page while logged out.
Perfectly Normal Industries
... MS Windows instead.
Ducks and runs away (very) quickly....
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Means when you scp a file to your machine, it appears on your desktop.
When a shell starts, it's in your desktop.
Encourages you to organize your home dir.
Means you're a lot faster at particular file operations which can be done quicker with the mouse keyboard shortcuts than with shell commands (eg, dragging a bunch of files onto a dir, deleting stuff).
Heres a window manger (http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/) i really haven't tried myself but i saw some other person use it and i'm quite impressed. It's a new approach to doing GUI's and i think it must be perfect if you want to optimize screen real-estate.
If you want to save screen estate there is a little tool here http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchmenu which can help you. On Windows there was a tool named RunIt, which is quite handy. You can configure your most often used applications and then it's gone. When you want to start one you simply put the mouse cursor to the rightmost position on the screen and press the right mouse button. The menu pops up and you can start your aplication. This is a replacement I wrote which runs on Windows and on Linux and it is one of the application that I couldn't live without it anymore. The Windows version has some drawbacks because of the way how the windows are managed, but the linux version works great.
One of the biggest productivity saps for a sysadmin is dealing with the massive volume of email that we get. In even a moderate-sized business, it's easy to get 1,000 mails per day, with a couple 100 actually from a person, not an automated script.
Now, what I'm about to say is predicated on the assumption that your external mail server already runs SPAM filters, and that virtaully everything that you actually get is "real" mail. If this is not the case, FIX THIS FIRST. Get your company to pony up for some serious anti-spam software. It saves EVERYONE a ton of time, and at the same time, cuts down on your (the company's) exposure to the nasties that inhabit email.
First, pick an email client which has filters. My preference is for Evolution or Thunderbird, but there are many out there. Pick one. As a previous poster noted, GIVE IT ITS OWN DESKTOP - that is, in your window manager which has virtual desktops, dedicate one solely for the email client. Now, configure it with lots of filters to sort your mail. Personally, I have a reasonable hierarchy with 3 folders at the top level: NOW, LATER, and WHENEVER. Underneath these, there should be folders for every type of email you get: ones from your boss, ones from the company HR, ones from the monitoring scripts running on your servers (you do have these, right? RIGHT?). Take a good long time figuring out how to get these down cold - you want a good balance of sufficient sorting without going overboard. I find that having about 30-50 folders total is optimal for me. If you can, also have the email client tag your mail with "importance" color coding (most clients have this, and it's really useful).
Now to reading: obviously, your should read the NOW, well, NOW. However, you don't want to be completely interrupt-driven. I would turn off any biff-style mail notification, or at best, turn down its check time to no less than 10 minutes between check. Instead, train yourself to periodically check the NOW folder. Read and deal with the NOW stuff during your normal workflow.
The LATER folder should probably be read every couple of hours, or if you truly haven't anything else to do. Resist the temptation to open it and look. Finally, the WHENEVER shouldn't be read until the end of the day (or maybe while your eating lunch at your desk ;-)
Email is one of the great things about networks; however, it can be an enormous timesink if not properly handled. -Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
(whomever caused this behavior to be default; a pox on you)
p.s. Some bonehead in Usenet advises frobbing your terminal type to vt100 to get the same result. Do not do this. If you don't know why then especially don't do this!
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
in fact not only on linux, i use it on linux/(i386|ppc) and solaris/sparc:
the ion windowmanager ( http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/ ) and your favourite shell (bash in my case, but zsh or csh are as good )
most time on a desktop you spend with resizing or moving or focusing windows, so why using windows anyway?
Am I missing something here? What does this have to do with desktop Linux. This guy doesn't sound like a sysadmin to me.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
Unlink?
Create a shell script containing a tar --remove-files command which dumps the archive in the users trash folder and alias del, delete, remove, trash to it.
Create a move command which performs a cp then tar --remove-files.
use these new commands instead of the defaults. Hell, alias the default rm,mv,cp in your shell.
Deleted
Using a mouseless window manager (I read a great review about that one which uses an emacs style windowing system or real window/desktop distribution)
Organise your time and tasks outside of your computer.
I am interested to see what everyone else said, and if they agree with me in that software won't save you time you cannot save yourself. (I don't think software can make your thinking more efficient at that granularity)
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Set up or learn the keyboard shortcuts for everything you do. That's it. Much time saved.
Deleted
The most important Linux Desktop (uh-huh) Tip I can give you: use ^R in Bash as much as you can;-)
0x or or snor perron?!
1) install KDE 3.4 (it's faster, it's better all-round).
/usr/lib/mozillaNNNNN and /usr/lib/kde3 to
/etc/default/rcS and replace
/etc/default/hal and make sure DROP_DAEMON_PRIVS is
/etc/hal/device.d and do this: /usr/bin/fstab-sync 50-fstab-sync.hal
/etc/profile and add this:
2) run prelink -v --conserve-memory -q -a
but first add
prelink.conf (and any other software such as openoffice)
3) on debian, edit
FSCKFIX="n" with FSCKFIX="y"
4) on debian, install hal, dbus-1 and udev, and then edit
commented out (this will make it possible for you to
mount auto-detected USB drives etc.)
5) cd to
ln -s
5) edit
export KDE_IS_PRELINKED="1"
these simple things will make your system faster, more robust in the face of complete technically incompetent blithering idiots who would otherwise blindly press ctrl-d when faced with a prompt saying "your filesystem is corrupted. give root password for maintenance or press ctrl-d", and also provide automatic access to USB devices that is otherwise bloody inconvenient.
Finland isn't part of the USA? Damn!
Simple is good. Bling Bling is bad. I personally choose enlightenment.
You just literally made me choke on my breakfast. Bad!
Well, choke laughing, so it's not all bad.
... Install Windows! Now sing with me, "A spoonful of sugar, makes the medicine go dowwwwn..."
Use OS X. Problem solved.
The problem I have with these tactics is that obfuscation strategies don't work against a sufficiently clever and determined opponent. And I'm very clever and determined when it comes to avoiding work.
No, the important thing to do is to sap your determination for wasting time. The reason people waste time is that they have so many commitments they can't keep them straight, although they're rattling around somewhere in their head.
The mind is like a thick, opaque stew -- you can only be aware of what happens to boil to the surface at the moment. We toss all the commitments we make to ourselves and others into the pot, and pretty soon its beyond us to know all the things that are in there. It's very common to harbor a unnamed suspicion that that something nasty like a severed human finger could surface at any second. This creates a tremendous resistance to even looking at the stew, much less stirring it up to find something important you've lost.
The secret to productivity is to change your mind from stew to consommé. To do this, you have to find some place other than your mind to put all your commitments. Then you have to look at all those things on a regular basis, because they'll sneak into your head if you don't. That's what people miss when they "get organized".
Simple program to clear your mind of frightening junk:
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
use 800px width on your primary browser and put it to you upper right of your desktop. But your secondary browsers in other virtual desktops (You are not going to be successful if you only test for 1 browser). Then have a terminal/ssh client/texteditor/WYSIWYG editor (In which you will need to be beaten up for being a complete looser) open parallel to the browser on the left taking as much width as possible because when you are typing code having width is useful to prevent word wrapping or trimming where you can still see the relevant information on the browser. Both of these should be about 2/3 the screen height. /usr/local/apache2/logs/error.log (Or where ever your log file is).
On the bottom have 2 terminals open (sshed into the server?) One would be for compiling/copying/(S)FTPing or whatever if you have to. And the second one will be connected to the webserver you are testing on with a tail -f
On your other virtual desktops have a some terminals open one to the system other sshed into the server and also alternative browsers, Including say a vmware session, in 800x600 mode to Windows to check out IE. The trick is to have all the information you need handy and in front of you. Try not to over lap windows much so you can see all that is happening. I personally like to have the windows focus follow my mouse so I just move the mouse down to the next window and I just can type without clicking but other people don't care for it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Why not install a cracked version of OSx86 .... before its too late !
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A simple alias or function can be helpfull in backing up a files. Where I work, we have the standard of:
/etc/hosts use:
/etc/hosts{,.YYMMDD.un1xl0ser.1}
/etc/hosts" or something similar. In the long run, this will save you time in tracking changes on your system.
cp filename.YYYYMMDD.username.X
So when backing up
cp
Where YYYYMMDD is obvious and X is used if there are multiple changes to the files. This helps us to keep track of changes easily. SCCS/CVS is another option, but kind of a pain to setup and get used to.
If you want, you can go as far as to make a function so you can just type "mkbackup
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
GNOME is the default in Redhat.
C got the rep for being fast and cool, because it was all about Unix, which was fast and cool. Every Unix machine (well, most) had a C compiler.
Pascal has a hand-holding feel, like you're in a little box constantly fighting the language. No pointers or similar mechanism. Abstracted strings.
Why do race cars use a manual transmission? That's why programmers use C(++): more control.
But your basic idea that Americans have a "not invented here" bias against some software is just wrong. If there is documentation in English, we don't care where it originated.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Insert windows xp disk. Format. Install windows. Save countless hours messing with the configuration and get some work done with real productivity software.
(face it you evangelists, Linux is just not there.. yet)
Find the fine manual for desktop settings. And when you do, please tell me where it is. I've been using the Gnome desktop for several years, and occasionally I'll stumble across a neat feature, set it, and then it'll get unset, and I can't find how I set it in the first place.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
"One of the great things about the Linux desktop is that there are lots of ways to save a lot of time from useful widgets and configuration to minimize the pain of repetitive tasks"
Shouldn't that read "One of the bad things about the Linux desktop is that there are lots of ways to spend hours setting up your configuration to gain seconds of your time each year."?
How about stop posting on Slashdot.
Alternatively IIRC Dave Korn has been quoted as saying they've removed Perl from all the machine in his lab because Ksh does it all. Hmmmmm.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
No, the one thing Slashdot cannot survive is losing the trolls. The kind of news one sees in Slashdot can be found in a number of other places, but the really funny trolls were a Slashdot exclusive. Now that they are gone, thanks to a very active site policy, there aren't any compelling reasons to read Slashdot.
OTOH, who created the first "practical" car is a debatable argument. If one considers the very popular thing almost everybody uses that's called a "car" today, I would say the invention was made by Henry Ford. Before the model T, all cars were very expensive, very impractical, or both.
Back about a decade ago the Unix systems at Purdue had some semblance of rm with a cache / recycle bin. You would think it would not be that difficult to do, but we still have the same old rm command.
1. Give that high-powered desktop with dual LCD panels to someone who isn't going to waste CPU cycles and gigabytes of RAM running only a web browser, email, and some ssh sessions. Perhaps a developer?!?!
0 0/images/I1_hw_ppworksblade2500_mon_img_lg.jpg
2. Get yourself an old Pentium 400Mhz box, don't bother installing X-Windows, Gnome, nor even KDE. Replace your 2 LCD panels with one VGA 19" or 20" monitor that you've probably got just collecting dust somewhere.
3. Run Pine (novice) or Mutt(pro) for email, ssh, vim or emacs, and Links2 (with Javascript & Graphics) http://links.twibright.com/
4. Use GNU Screen to manage the 3 applications you need to run with unlimited windows including the ability to name and split your screens. Get someone to put screen on those remote boxes if it's not already there so you can keep your session running on the server when you disconnect. This way you can just exit out of screen and logout of your console then return and login again and restore the screen sessions. Heck you could even dial into work and resume all your sessions from home too!
5. Figure out what scripting languages you have available on all those boxes you monitor via ssh and then write scripts in that language.
6. Run your console in high res FrameBuffer mode and use a nicer font, gives you more room to split GNU Screen.
There, productivity problem solved. Also approach your boss and ask for a raise for the amount of money you just saved the company. i.e. they bought an over priced, over powered machine for someone who really doesn't need it.
This is what happens when you ask stupid questions on Slashdot and then brag about how great your workstation is. Well buddy, got news for ya many of us have better workstations!
I've got one of these babies sitting on my desk:
- http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/sunblade25
Which is about to be replaced by this:
- http://www.apple.com/powermac/dualcore.html (Quad CPU's Baby!)
- 76.6 Gigaflops / 16 GB's of RAM
- Dual 23" Displays http://www.apple.com/displays/
- Down the hall will be a few of these http://www.apple.com/xserve/workgroupcluster/
To top it all off, my team will be able to compile XCode 2.2 apps utilizing all the workstations and even a few G5 XServes (non clustered) in the server room. That alone will cut down our compile time considerably!
Yeah, Yeah, I could build a quad Athlon monster that will be cheaper but I am not paid to build boxes, my company buys them for me.
Use xemacs.
Oh, and use sunscreen.
First, while this is a personal preference, I use xfce4 for my desktop. It's fast, it's lightweight (relatively) and its infinitely configurable.
Then, download devilspie. This allows you to set up various programs like XMMS and gaim to not show up in your tasklist, pin windows to the screen regardless of desktop, etc, and makes ALT-TAB skip programs.
Then, download xbindkeys, and bind all those extraneous keys most new keyboards have to actual functions. If your system doesn't understand the keys (you're getting setkeycodes messages in /var/log/messages), then man setkeycodes, and map all those keys to something, and make xbindkeys use them to do various things. I have a Microsoft Multimedia keyboard here at work, and I've mapped every key to do something useful. Sleep enables my screensaver, log-off, calculator, messenger, web/home, mail all do what you'd expect, media runs xine, mute, play, stop, volume up and down, next song, and previous song all do what you'd think in xmms, my music runs xmms, my pictures runs gimp, and my documents runs xffm (xfce's file manager.)
Learn (or change so you know) the key combinations for switching desktops, swapping applications, etc.
Put SSH keys on all the servers you normally log into, and put ssh-askpass and ssh-agent into your xinitrc file.
Something I use that I find *INCREDIBLY* useful is:
Which makes X ignore the caps lock key, because in reality, I *never* use it, and the only time it's on, it's on by mistake, and learning that it's on by accident whilst running vim is *never* fun.
alias su to sudo su, so you only have to enter a password every once in a while.
Map one of your keys on your keyboard (if you don't have a multimedia keyboard, make it a ctrl-key combination of some sort) to xscreensaver-command -lock, and make it a habit to hit that button every time you walk away from your computer, so any logged in root shell is never a problem as far as physical security goes.
Also, if you do a lot of programming, and/or use vim a lot, I've found this function I threw together pretty useful in my .bashrc
If I type in 'vim', it runs vim.perl (debian package) in X, since vim for x is generally more useful than console.
Also, I've set up my ssh to automatically forward X11 sessions (I only log into hosts I trust) so that if I run vim, and have my bash profile the same on the server I'm logging into, I get pretty graphical vim windows that make proper use of my :set mouse option.
That's all that immediately comes to mind, but it's also 9:25am on Monday.
That's probably the single most important time-saving suggestion. Essentially every program you use regularly should be a keyboard shortcut. Set up one for web browsers, terminals, calculators, email, basically every command you use on a daily or weekly basis. The overhead of remembering a few shortcuts will pay you back many times over when they become habit.
Also, use keyboard shortcuts for closing windows, and for tabbing between multiple windows. The best way to help this, is to keep the number of windows on one desktop screenspace under control. So use multiple desktops and use a command like alt-F1 through alt-Fwhatever to switch between them. Also, establish habits like using one desktop for certain categories of use. One desktop space can be for instant messaging and email, one for web browsing, one for programming, etc. This will enable you to switch from one task to another with relative ease.
When you are doing something like looking up functions or command references on one desktop space, programming on a second desktop space, and testing on a third, then good organization like this can greatly improve your efficiency.
Ignoring the typical flames and trolls. It's been a while I've seen such a collection of excellent tips & advice. For those that succesfully made the crossing, productivity (at least here) has increased by a factor of 10. If however your stuff is playing the latest directX games, or installing pirated software - there is no need to migrate. Most flavours of Linux is hard to administer hence best enjoyed if someone else does it for you. Useability / User-friendliness then surpasses that of Windowze on the whole. But why should I convince you? I feel a slight tinge of sadistic satisfaction when the Windowze OS, people extol, suddenly turn nasty against them after a mere 6months+ of using. Time to reinstall I guess (but don't do it too many times - you do know you will lose the right to activation?) .. Enjoy :)
Just enter in Konqueror
fish://user@yourdomain.com
(yes that is fish) and you will be asked for your ssh password.
Your remote files appear in Konqueror & you can then copy/paste etc to your local filesystem.
OK, now this f'n rocks. There have been many times where I didn't want to set up a mount in order to get files from one computer to another. I usually just use scp, but sometimes it would be easier to just SEE what I need. This is awesome. I use the shell all day, but sometimes using a gui file manager is easier. This helps immensely.
I have to say, this is one of the better articles I have seen in a while on Slashdot. I don't agree with some people's assessments or suggestions, but all it takes is 1 or 2 tips. Fish is definitely one of them. Now I actually have a reason to use konqueror.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Don't take this the wrong way, and I could be completely wrong, but I have to wonder if that is really that useful. Wouldn't a better solution be a script/daemon/whatever that reads the logs for you and alerts you if there's something you actually need to know?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
"Does anyone know of a mechanism for launching apps using keystrokes like Win-e for explorer.exe under MS windows? Best I could do outside of mapping "extra" keys with hotkey is to map the Super key to gnome's "Run command" dialog and then type in the app ... weak."
:)
You could use KDE, which makes it very easy.
Short of that, use xbindkeys.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
You can use the xosd library for all sorts of monitoring purposes, ie. to warn you when disk space gets low or someone tries to log into your computer. Just let a script run in the background and pipe the messages to the screen by using the osd_cat binary.
Simplify your work experience. If you're using KDE or some other "bloated" wm/dm, consider stripping as much of the 'fluff' away as possible.
I personally prefer using xfce4 as it's lightweight and simple, but still featureful enough to have a 'modern' look. It's also quite fast compared to gnome and kde, taking very little memory. All I have for a "user interface" is the launchbar on autohide (which contains all the programs I run) and a taskbar with all the regular applications I run - and only those.
Also, it's quite keyboard-friendly. reducing your reliance on the hairless rodent will increase your ability to get work done quickly, I've found. Using hte mouse takes a lot of time!
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
KDE. V (watch out its probably gonna get hot) V
Learn perl and bash. Learn some of the more common unix command line utilities (you learn these just by learning bash) Mix in some windowmaker dynamic menus and rox appdirs. Reconfigure gtk2 to allow you to dynamically set shortcuts for all of your apps. Learn to use rox's minibuffer. productivity++
We call them scripts in UNIX/Linux worlds.
I have used putty to forward ports. Being versed in Human User Interface design my opinion is that putty is sorely wanting in user friendliness.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Use screen!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Enjoy, you can do whatever you wasnt.
:-P
You don't need oozles of power to run email, ssh and a web browser.
If I was your manager I would take the toy away from you
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Screen was mentioned before, but what wasn't suggested is this:
Use 2-3 or more xterms (rxvt, gnome-terminal, kterm, whatever) and use screen on each of them. If screen isn't already running, start it with "screen -U". If it is already running then connect to it with "screen -U -x -R". Do this in each of your terminals. You will be able to use the screen windows separately in each xterm.
Each terminal window becomes a window into screen's windows. So while screen can have 10 or so windows running in it, you have 2-3 windows into these windows.
It really is very manageable, and the great thing about screen is that you can do it remotely just as easily
Try kuake (http://www.nemohackers.org/kuake.php) if you use KDE (there are similar apps out there for other desktops). It's a terminal emulator which lowers on a keyboard shortcut like the console in Quake. It saves me a lot of time which I used to spend opening and closing xterms. I keep a screen session in it normally.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
nice. i decided on the same binding for the same reasons within a few hours of first using screen, and never looked back. one other nice thing: in those rare instances when you're working on some machine without screen, it rarely if ever hurts that you hit C-z twice automatically when you want to suspend something.
.profile on any machine i use regularly, with a three-second pause just in case i want to hit C-c if something's buggy. i never do.
life before screen... hard to imagine. it's part of my middling complex
"prefer C/C++, mostly because of its sane type conversions"
;)
i have moderation permission right now, but won't be giving you a "Funny" because am already discussing...
I don't feel like it...
You can get terrific speed increases by re-compiling your kernel. The one that your distro ships is generic so can't take advantage of all of the features of your CPU and is often quite conservative with optimisations.
Start by getting the compiler to build code for your processor, for example -march=athlon64
Then add some useful changes: -funroll-loops -ffast-math -fomit-frame-pointer
And next, something that will get me flamed: -O3. Now I know everybody says that going above -O2 for a kernel (and almost everything else) will make your system unstable, but I've been running my machines with kernels compiled with -O3 for over a year and never had any problems with instability.
A rough idea of how much faster a system will run with these optimisations, I tried cleaning up a 15 minute audio sample using GWC with the original kernel and the optimised one; originally it took 1 minute 13 seconds, after the kernel optimisations it took 32 seconds.
Breakfast served all day!
#!/bin/sh /usr/local/bin/games
rm -f -R
I think if you use a KDE app, say Kaffeine or Amarok, to play those MP3s, it will work. Non-KDE apps naturally don't support the KDE-only smb:// and fish:// ioslaves.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Just where were you suggesting our friend should insert the Windows XP disk ? That's supposing he had enough money to get himself a copy - above all after paying for his work-station. I hope that your post is not a sadistic invitation to indulge in computer assisted masochism. If such were the case, I'd have to report you (to the computer assisted masochism police)!!! And just what "real productivity software" have you in mind .... please stop confusing me.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
instead
Please submit as a patch.
Engineering is the art of compromise.